Thursday, June 26, 2014

Use of Pilotless Drones for Assasinations Violates the Rule of Law

USE OF PILOTLESS DRONES FOR ASSASINATIONS VIOLATES THE
RULE OF LAW

A secret US government legal memo, prepared for President
Obama, was recently ordered to be released to the public by a Federal Court
responding to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The Administration’s legal reasoning clearly fails to justify the use of
pilotless drones, controlled by a killer operator, sitting behind a desk
somewhere in the US, aiming his computer joy stick at human targets on
the ground, thousands of miles away. The heavily edited “legal”
rationale has only highlighted the disgraceful lack of respect for the very
laws and constitutional protections that America has always proclaimed as its
unique contribution to world order and the advancement of
civilization.

More than 4,000 people have been murdered by drones, many
of them civilians-- old people, and children as well-- in attacks aimed at
people selected for assassination by the President of the United States in
weekly meetings with intelligence and military officials without benefit of
charges, evidence, or trial. The President of the United States, a
former Constitutional professor at one of America’s most prestigious schools of
law, Harvard University, acts as judge, jury and executioner all in one—a
terrible violation of the US Constitution’s promise to protect the rights of
individuals.

Shortly after the court-ordered release of the memo a new
bipartisan commission of former military and security officials issued a report
warning that US drone policy had put us on a “slippery slope” towards a
proliferation of similar actions by other countries. They made a whole
series of recommendations to help America avoid “blowback” from its unregulated
use of this lethal new technology, which is easily capable of being replicated
by other countries who may wish to wreak similar harm and havoc upon the US.

There is a growing lawlessness at the highest levels of
government, justified by the criminal destruction of the World Trade towers in
2001. Instead of treating that tragic catastrophe as a criminal
act, punishable in a court of law, a phony “war on terror” was declared and
enabled the obscene growth of the US military-industrial complex, and a
flagrant disregard for traditional American rights. With the continued
incarceration of suspects in Guantanamo prison in Cuba, America has suspended
the common law tradition of the ancient Magna Carta, in which it was held that
the British king had no right to lock someone away in a dungeon and throw away
the key without evidence, charges, and an opportunity for a trial. This latest
secret memo, now partially revealed by a court decision, which attempts to
justify illegal assassinations by drones, serves only to highlight how far
America has strayed from its own ideals and professed respect for the rule of
law.